Archive for the ‘Cookware’ Category

I cannot tell you how much I enjoy cheese. I really do think that it is one of my favoritest foods EVER!!! It has multiple personalities and textures and you can take it anywhere!!!!

Olive cream cheese schmeared on a toasted everything bagel! A piece of cheddar stuffed precariously on a stalk of celery. Asiago cheese mixed with the mozzarella on your pizza. Stuffed inside of a burger instead of on top. Pierogi Lasagna. You can even deep fry cheese in a Dutch oven! And my all time fav….homemade mac n cheese….I grew up with extra sharp white Vermont cheddar as the base to mac n cheese….I have made other combinations….but still nothing compares to Mom’s mac n cheese. (It was, and still is, Halloween tradition at my house.)

There are ENDLESS combinations….cold, hot, sweet, savory. There are even cheeses with fruit, nuts, and seeds right in them!!! One of the awesomest cheeses that I ever had was called Barely Buzzed @ American Cheese when they were still in West Sayville, NY. It was rubbed with lavender and coated in espresso. Erin sold these rolled oat baguettes too….I would melt the Barely Buzzed on a piece of that warm baguette…

OK….hungry now…time to go find a piece of cheese!

( There is always some form of cheese in my house on any given day ALWAYS!!!)

Tailgating season is about to go into full swing. Baseball season is winding down. Racing season is over the hump. Concert season is in full tilt. And the gridiron is about to heat up.

For those of us that are seasoned warriors of the blacktop party, we know the drill. For the newbies, crack your knuckles, grease those joints. It’s time to get cracking.

It is always nice to have a crew. Having more people to do stuff, help out and bring food and party goods is great. But that also means being more elaborate, having more food, more beverages, more stuff. More stuff means bigger and better means of cooking for the masses. That means not just the little grill that could. That little guy is for you and your partner or your best bud. You start getting into numbers and you need bigger and better. Not just grills either. Now is when you can get more creative. Get a stock pot and outdoor propane cooker. Make a big pot of chili. Steam lobsters and clams. You can even deep fry a turkey for those, on or close to, Thanksgiving Day games.

If you really have a big crew, you may even want to upgrade from a conventional turkey fryer to a safer fryer, like an FF2 Super by R & V Works. This is a 6 gal. deep fryer that you can deep fry just about anything in, including a 15 to 17 pound turkey. It’s safer for frying & it’s mobile. It has a rolling caddy so you can easily move it to where ever on the black top you want it. After cooking you can just leave the fryer cool while your in watching the game, with out the danger of someone bumping into it and knocking it over. After the game, just open the drain valve, attach a drain hose for convenience, and drain your frying oil right back into the original containers. The cooking compartment separates from the caddy for ease of transportation if you are short on height space. Easier use and clean up, means more time to hang with your friends and enjoy the game.

Having a larger fryer like this can add so much more depth to your tailgate menu. Now you can free up the stock pot and patio stove for corn on the cob and potatoes, or Philly Cheese steak, while deep frying French fries, or Buffalo wings in your Cajun Fryer. It doesn’t just have to be frozen burger patties or hot dogs on a rinky dink table top grill anymore. Let’s fire up this parking lot party and jam tailgating season into full gear!!

Chowder is a thick rich soup. Sometimes thickened by milk or cream or by crushed up crackers like “Oysterettes’. The name chowder is possibly derived from the French word “chaudiere” meaning stew pot or the type of pot that this concoction was cooked in. Nowadays you can cook chowder right on your stove top in a large soup pan. Better yet, how about right on the beach with your freshly caught clams or cold weather tailgating in the stadium parking lot using a traditional turkey fryer kit or stock pot and outdoor propane cooker?

Chowder, or chowda, in common New England terminology, usually contains potatoes and onions, sometimes celery and bacon or salt pork. The main ingredient is typically clams, fish or corn.

There have been many variations of clam chowda over the years. The main ingredients like the quahogs or chowder clams always the constant. Smaller clams are easier to eat raw on the half shell or steamed. The larger quahogs or chowder clams are chewy and tough. It is easier to chop them up and put them in soups or cakes.

New England Clam Chowda, probably the most well known, a creamy thick soup of clams, potatoes, onions, milk or cream, and sometimes celery, bacon, or salt pork. Almost always served with saltine type crackers or oyster crackers to crush up in the soup to make it even thicker.

There is a lesser known version of chowder that probably originated in coastal New England. This version is clear broth made of clam juice. The ingredients also include quahogs, potatoes, onions, bacon and sometimes celery. This version has spread from Rhode Island (a possible location of origin), all the way down the coastal eastern seaboard, with versions popping up in Delaware, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, regions where the hard shell bi-vavle is readily available. Though a spicy version is even found as far south as Florida.

Manhattan style Clam Chowder is the bane of New England apparently. “Manhattan” clam chowder was named due to New Englanders being offended by Rhode Island’s Portuguese immigrants inspired version of their traditional chowda. Portuguese cuisine had many traditional stews based with tomatoes. Instead of adding cream to the clear broth, they added tomatoes instead. Scornful New Englanders called this modified version “New York” clam chowder because, in their view, calling someone a New Yorker was, and probably still is, a major insult. Little did they know how popular the tomato based version would become. Long Island and Jersey chowders typically contain tomato. The people of Maine were so abhorred by this tomatoey version, that their legislature actually passed a bill in 1939, making tomatoes in clam chowder illegal.

Back to the clear broth, that goes by many names: Rhode Island Clam Chowder, Block Island, Delaware, Hatteras, Core Sound and Bogue Sound chowders. I came across a version through the NC Cooperative Extension that I elaborated upon.

If your clams are fresh caught, it is always a good idea to purge them first. This will help to cut down on sandy grit. Get some fresh clean Sound or Bay water and place preferably rinsed clams in the fresh water…24 hours is good. If you can purge them more than once all the better.

Ingredients:

Clams and juice (the more the better) 1 qt or more. 30 chowders or more.

3 large onions

6 slices bacon

3 lbs. Potatoes

3 ribs celery

Pepper to taste

Shuck the clams and put the meat and juice in a bowl.

If you are dealing with very large chowders with large muscles or don’t have a clam knife, try freezing the clams. When ready to open clams, run warm water over the clam and take a paring knife and remove clam from shell. Place frozen clams and frozen juice in a bowl. When all clams are removed from shells place clams on chopping board and dice with a large knife or meat cleaver, put diced clams and juice back in a bowl and let thaw. This will allow the sand and grit to settle to the bottom of the bowl resulting in less grit in the chowder. Dice the potatoes, celery, onions, and bacon. In large stock pot or cast iron Dutch oven, place the clams, onions, bacon and celery and simmer until the onions are tender. Add in the clam juice being careful not to put in the contents that have settled in the bottom of the bowl. Add potatoes that have been peeled and diced. Add water until desired salty taste is achieved (about 3 cups). Then black pepper to desired taste.

Whatever your preference may be, get out there and dig some clams! Who wants Chowda??

Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama is the oldest annual Carnival celebration in America, having begun in 1703. That is 15 years before New Orleans was founded in 1718. From Mobile, being the first capital of French Louisiana in 1702, the festival began in North America as a French Catholic tradition.

Mardi Gras season or Carnival season which traditionally starts at Epiphany (Jan 6 or the Twelfth night) and comes to a raging head the day before Ash Wednesday, at midnight on Mardi Gras, French for “Fat Tuesday” or Shrove Tuesday. Many places don’t celebrate for months of carnival. Many start a week or two before, with most places celebrating 3-4 days before.

Mardi Gras is far from being a French or French American celebration. It is celebrated all over the world by my people of the Catholic/Christian faith. This tradition, also known as Shrovetide in the UK & Ireland, is for feasting and overindulgence, before the Lenten season, which begins Ash Wednesday. A time to eat rich, fatty foods and drink too excess before the fasting of Lent begins. In the Netherlands pre-Lenten celebration is Carnaval. Carnaval translated from Latin, or “Carne Vale”, means “Goodbye to the meat”.

Many Fat Tuesday foods in America, now associated with Mardi Gras, do come from Creole and Cajun ancestry. Both groups now having strong ties to Louisiana and the previously French occupied southern regions of the United States. Creole being of mixed ethnicity, with strong French and Spanish influence, Cajun being more largely tied to French speaking Acadians who came from the now Coastal Canadian Maritimes. One of the most popular American dishes served during Mardi Gras tends to be Jambalaya. This is a rice, vegetable and meat dish. Traditionally the ingredients for Jambalaya were gathered by people in in festive clothing and masks, from knocking on community doors. Whatever ingredients were acquired were brought together in a large cast iron pot and cooked until done. Later the whole community would come together and partake in the dish. Many other traditional Cajun and Creole dishes are also served, like gumbo, etouffee, and crawfish boils. But again, it is a time of indulgence. There are also plenty of fried foods cooked in outdoor propane deep fryers, turkey fryers and Cajun Fryers. Beer and other alcohols find their way into the mix.

Overindulgence, high cholesterol and hangovers abound! Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we fast!!! Happy Fat Tuesday all!

Free shipping is a loaded phrase. 9 times out of 10 shipping is never really free. The product has already been marked up to include an amount sufficient to cover the costs of shipping. Many people see the words free shipping and will look no further. Honestly if they did looked a bit further, they may actually pay shipping to a company and actually pay LESS than if they go with a company that claims free shipping.

When a company marks up a product to cover shipping fees it is technically a crap shoot. The company needs to more or less pick a price that will cover shipping all over. Shipping in the same town for instance will be exactly the same as say from Florida to Alaska. Convenient for the long distance customer, not fair to the in town customer, and a crap shoot for the business.

Shipping companies actually don’t work that way. Distance is a major factor when it comes to pricing of shipping, as well as weight, over all size, even odd shaped products come into play. I have customers that find great pricing on the deep fryers that I sell. But for them to expect that a 300 lb. outdoor propane deep fryer‘s great price includes shipping is just wrong. An item like this will ship freight. It does not go into a typical brown, yellow, or white truck that you see every day. It ships in a large cargo truck or even a tractor trailer. Diesel prices are quite high right now. There is usually a fuel surcharge on almost anything that gets shipped nowadays. Besides, a 300lb. grill or deep fryer that ships across one state compared to the shipping price of a unit that ships across 50 states is quite a major difference.

So anyway, keep this thought in mind when making a purchase on line. Just because someone says free shipping, it doesn’t mean that you are getting the best deal. Take a little more time and get the best deal, not just because it says it’s FREE>

Butterball has teamed up with Masterbuilt again and made a turkey seasoning kit. It can be used with other meats as well but has been manufactured for Masterbuilt with their electric turkey fryers in mind. Each kit comes with a 16 oz. container of a Buttery Creole Marinade, a container of Butterball Cajun dry rub spice, and a 1 oz. seasoning injector.

This kit has everything that you need for the perfect turkey, whether it is deep fried, grilled, or smoked. Can also be used with beef or pork. Gives you the option of injecting seasonings, rubbing on seasonings, or doing both for a great bang of flavor. You could technically even turn the rub into an injection seasoning by mixing with orange juice and making a liquid solution. That would put some kick in your bird! Besides the orange juice is acidic and will act as a natural tenderizer.

Just 3 easy steps and you have wonderful flavor, both inside and out; season, fry, grill, or smoke, then eat!

What kind of oil should you buy? You want an oil with a high smoke point. That means an oil that is going to hold a constant high temperature with out hitting the point that it starts to smoke and then hit flash point. Refined peanut oil has a high smoke point, 450 degrees F. Some people are allergic to peanut oil, though I heard that the more refined the more hypo-allergenic, but to be on the safe side, if you don’t know for sure, get some other form of vegetable oil. Besides peanut oil can be expensive. Corn oil and high oleic canola oil are more readily available, have a good smoke point, and are less expensive than peanut oil.

How much oil should you use? Measuring the oil is quite simple. Take the completely thawed bird, place it in the stock pot. Fill the pot with water to the fill line. Place the bird in the perforated basket or on the poultry rack that you will be using. Place everything in the pot. Fill your stock pot with water until the bird is covered, plus a LITTLE extra. Remove the turkey and rack or basket. Mark your water line. This is how much oil to use. Dry the pot and basket completely before adding the oil.

Make sure your fryer is sturdy, level ground or concrete, not in your garage or covered wooden deck, away from combustible materials. If windy, place your propane tank upwards of the wind, so that the flame is blowing away from the LP gas.

Make sure your cooker will not be in a walk through area.

Make sure the kids, the dog, and any possibly non-sober guests have somewhere else to play!

While the frying oil is heating up, dry your turkey completely. Please make sure your turkey is properly thawed. Cooking times may vary if your poultry has not been properly thawed. Rule of thumb is to get the bird to room temp. an hour prior to deep frying. Sometimes a cold or frozen spot in a joint or deep in the turkey breast won’t allow that section to cook properly. Besides ice crystals left on the bird can cause a huge boil over and flare up.

Clean and dry poultry inside & out. Remove giblets and neck, and trim away all excess fat and skin.(This stuff makes good gravy stock. Set it to boil, then simmer while the turkey is frying. While the turkey cools, strain the liquid from the giblets, add some water and corn starch. Heat and stir until thickened. Instant turkey gravy.) Make sure opening around the neck cavity is wide and clear. Make a 1-inch cut in the skin at the leg-thigh joints. This allows oil to drain when the turkey is done.

Inject your bird with seasonings if you prefer. Place your turkey in a roasting pan. A trick that I learned from “The BBQ Dr.” is to cover your bird with plastic wrap. This will keep the marinade from splashing back at you. Fill your seasoning injector. Pierce right through the plastic wrap into the turkey. The important thing to remember is to inject the turkey all over. Put a little in each hole. Make sure you distribute the injection evenly so you don’t get pockets of the marinade. Push plunger down slowly while pulling injector out of meat to give even distribution of seasoning. Inject into various points on the breast, thighs, and drumstick. Even do the wings. Flip your bird over, cover with plastic wrap, and inject the bottom side as well. There are portions of the breast that you may have missed by just injecting from the top side. Many people do the injection process the night before or early morning of. Some people like to use rubs as well, but much of the rub will come off during the cooking process, that is why injected seasonings are preferred. When using a dry powder marinade, mix with orange juice instead of water. The acidity in the orange juice enhances the marinade, plus it acts as a meat tenderizer. Wipe off any marinade they may have run with paper towels. You want to make sure that your turkey is nice and dry before lowering it into the hot frying oil.

Place turkey upside down on rack, with legs facing up. Remember, poultry legs facing up. Put your measured frying oil into the pot. Attach thermometer to the top edge, making sure the stem of the thermometer is in the oil at least one inch… very important! When the oil is 350 degrees to 375°F it is time to place the turkey in the pot. Depending on the amount of oil used & weather conditions, it may take from 15 to 25 minutes for the oil to reach 350°F-375°F. You want to start the temp. a little higher than the optimum of 350 because your oil will drop in temp when you add the bird. Attach the grab hook to the top loop of the rack. Wearing protective gloves, very slowly & carefully lower poultry into pot. Almost like steeping a tea bag. The oil will spit and bubble at this point. Take your time until you are able to settle the turkey to the bottom without creating a severe boil over. It may take 60-90 seconds to completely lower poultry into the oil! If you feel more comfortable using two people for this process, get yourself a lift bar that two people can hold at the same time. Also, if you are afraid of a boil over and grease fire, just at the time of insertion, shut off the burner, slowly tea bag your turkey into the oil. When all is settled, relight the burner.

Now monitor your temp. As I said the oil temp. will drop a bit. Get it back to 350. You want to maintain that temp. as close as possible. Control frying temperature by turning the valve on the hose & regulator assembly. Reduce the flame to maintain a constant. PS: After passing 450°F, cooking oil can heat up rapidly to its flashpoint of spontaneous combustion, which is a serious grease fire! Therefore, never leave cooker unattended! Constantly monitor your thermometer. When the bird is done, turn the cooker off at the tank. Leaving pot on cooker, place grab hook through top loop of the rack and very carefully remove rack, with your turkey, from pot. Place rack with poultry on absorbent paper and allow to drain for few minutes, then remove from basket or rack and place on a platter to cool before carving. As I said, now is a great time to thicken the gravy and finish up your side dishes.

One last thing to keep in mind is your propane. Have an extra tank handy just in case. You do not want to run out halfway through a deep frying session.

Have fun, be safe. Use sober, common sense and you will have a Thanksgiving dinner to rival all your past ones.

As the lesson on turkey fryers comes to a close, we now come to the safer fryer. These are larger outdoor propane deep fryers that you can fry many things, but if so inclined, you can deep fry a turkey. Two companies that manufacture these type of fryers are R & V Works who make the Cajun Fryer, and Bayou Classic that make the Bayou Fryer. Both are quite similar in design, a V shaped bottom with a squared cooking compartment made of steel.

What makes these fryers safer, is that unlike the open exposed flame and pot of bubbling oil of a traditional turkey fryer, these units have a self contained flame. The ignition port is usually at the side or the back of the unit. The flames run through the oil in the cooking compartment in self contained metal tubes. As the metal heats, it in turn heats the frying oil. And, yes it does get hot enough to heat the oil to deep fry anything you want, even a whole turkey. Any spillage, bubbling oil or splash back that may occur would come out of the front of the unit, not down the side, or out of the back, therefore no hot oil and flame should ever come in contact. Thus, a safer fryer.

The V shaped bottom helps to keep the oil fresher longer. The oil below the tubes tends to stay much cooler. Any food particles that may fall to the bottom are not in hot, scorching oil. The food particles won’t burn, therefore keeping the oil from getting that burned carbon flavor.

You can recoup the investment of your cooking oil in no time, by filtering your oil after about every 5 uses. All of the units come with a drain valve to aid in this purpose. A piece of radiator hose from the auto parts store and an appropriate fitting attached, will help you filter your cooled oil back into the original containers, allowing you to strain out any food particles as well. If you don’t have a proper oil filtering and straining system, take your time with a funnel and a coffee filter and you are good to go. If you are tailgating, and don’t have time to let everything cool down properly, the use of metal Jerry cans can aid in this purpose. Before you go into the football game, carefully drain the hot oil into metal Jerry cans and place them off to the side or away. This will also help the deep fryer to cool down quicker so that people walking through the parking lot to get into the stadium will not be bumping into a hot metal fryer.

The safer fryers come in many sizes, from 2 1/2 gallon all the way up to a large 17 gallon fryer that is technically two 8 1/2 gallon fryers welded together on one stand. You can not cook a whole Thanksgiving bird in a 2 1/2 gallon unit though. Any unit ranging 6 gallons and up though, would be perfect for turkey. There are even specially modified frying baskets that help fit a turkey into a 6 gallon Cajun Fryer or larger.

If you love deep fried turkey, but don’t want to deep fry a bird in the house in a counter top deep fryer, or have a roasted turkey in an oil-less “turkey fryer”, and are still leery of the conventional turkey fryer, than a safer fryer is for you. You can deep fry everything from apple fritters to zeppoles in these fryers. Great for tailgate parties, camping, a Friday night fish fry at the church, or even for starting up a mobile catering business. Just spray down the inside of the unit with some spray cooking oil when not in use put a cover on it and store it in the garage or shed.

Deep fried turkey has become an American passion. If you have been thinking about getting a turkey fryer, do your research before you decide what fryer is right for you. You don’t just have to buy a traditional turkey fryer. There are lots of different options out there. Become informed and whatever you do go with, remember to read your manual, follow the directions, be safe, and use sober, common sense.

PS. Always remember to have an extra tank of propane on hand. You don’t want to run out in the middle of deep frying your Thanksgiving dinner!!

So, now we get to the traditional turkey fryer. A stock pot, a jet cooker, and a propane tank. Simple, yet many people are frightened by them.

As long as you read the instructions, follow what they say, use sober, common sense, and have a bucket of sand and/or an all purpose fire extinguisher handy, everything should be fine. Oil and water don’t mix!! There is no need to be a hero either. If you find yourself in a situation that is out of your hands, call the local fire department.

Reading about other peoples bad experiences with traditional outdoor propane deep fryers can be good, but can also be bad. If you read them in order to find out what not to do, that is fine. But if you read them and they just make you more opposed to cooking this way, then you will want to go with a safer outdoor propane fryer, or go oil less.

As long as you follow certain guidelines, you can have a perfect, crispy, & juicy fried turkey in about a third of the the time it takes to roast the same size bird in your oven. Imagine having a fully cooked 14 lb. turkey in less than an hour as compared to taking more than 4 hours to roast the same bird.

Safety is the main thing with this style of fryer. It must be used outdoors, and not inside of your garage or on your wooden deck right next to your house. You want the unit away from buildings and combustible materials.

It should be placed on a sturdy level section of ground or concrete.

You want a good distance between your propane tank and your cooker. But you also want to make sure that the hose between the tank and the cooker are not in a walk through area.

Make sure that the kids, your buddies and the dog all have some place else to play. That goes for after you are done cooking as well. It will take quite a while for the frying oil to cool down once you are done.

If there is any wind the day you are cooking, place your LP gas on the upside of the wind so that the heat of the burner is blowing in the opposite direction.

Make sure you are properly dressed. You want long sleeves, shoes, and pants. Shorts and flip flops are not a great idea here. You also want to have on a pair of protective gloves, preferably ones that can handle high temps. Safety goggles are not a bad idea either.

You want an oil with a high smoke point. For more on smoke point and cooking oils, see our past blog on Frying Oils.

Having all of your equipment right on hand is important. You want to have your thermometer to constantly monitor your temp. A conventional turkey fryer does not have a temperature gauge that will shut off when it reaches the desired temperature. It does not a safety shut off, or breakaway cord like a counter top deep fryer. You must constantly monitor an outdoor propane deep fat fryer. DO NOT EVER LEAVE THE FRYER UNATTENDED. Have your lifting hooks and everything right where you can get at them. If possible, have a friend that can assist in raising and lowering your turkey into the hot oil.

Make sure your poultry is fully thawed!!! Ice crystals and hot oil do not mix!

I like to start at about 400 degrees. Even though your bird should be at room temp. for about an hour before you fry it, the oil temp. is still going to drop down. Starting a little higher than optimum temp. will help speed temp. recovery time. When the oil has reached optimum temp. you want to raise and lower the bird into the hot oil just like a dunking tea bag. The oil will spit and bubble at this point. So take your time getting the turkey settled in before placing the lid on the unit. If you are worried about hot oil and flames coming in contact, shut the burner off while you are lowering the turkey into the pot. Once everything has settled, immediately turn your burner back on. Remember to monitor your temps. You don’t want the temperature too low, or too high.

Now, I can never stress the fact enough that a traditional turkey fryer is the perfect piece of outdoor cooking equipment for tailgaters, campers, and even the backyard social butterfly.

This unit not only deep fries. You can steam, boil, and stew with it. You can steam corn on the cob while you are grilling steaks in your back yard. You can have a whole Low Country Boil or New England Style Clam Bake at the beach. You can make beef stew for that cold weather tailgate, or a huge pot of hot chocolate, hot cider or mulled wine. Deep fry a huge mess of Buffalo wings for the Superbowl. Have a Friday Night Fish Fry at church. You can even make corned beef and cabbage for a Half Way to St. Patrick’s Day party at your fire department or in the stadium parking lot at a Notre Dame game. Menu options are endless.This kind of cooking equipment is a tailgater’s best friend.

And that’s not all. There are still at least 100 more applications that a turkey fryer can fit into. You can use them to can beets at harvest time. You can cook down maple sap to make syrup in the spring. Tie die shirts with the kids on a summer afternoon. There is no reason to pack your fryer away just because Thanksgiving is over.

As I have said before, if you are frightened of these wonderful cooking apparatuses due to past horror stories, then this cooker may not be for you. But, if you are willing to get out there and experiment, the options of this versatile piece of cooking equipment are astounding.